Distinguished Scholar Lectures on Holocaust

• September 26, 2007
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John K. Roth, the Robert and Carolyn Frederick Distinguished Visiting Professor of Ethics at DePauw University will lecture on the Holocaust at 8:00 p.m. tonight in Hays Hall, Room 104. The title of his lecture is "Forgiveness? Reflections on Ethics after the Holocaust." His lecture is free and open to the public.

Aside from his one year visiting professorship at DePauw, Roth is the Edward J. Sexton Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, where he is the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights. He is the author, co-author, or editor of more than forty books, and the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees.

Named the 1988 U. S. National Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Dr. Roth also serves on the faculty of Claremont Graduate University.

He received his BA from Pomona College in 1962, graduating magna cum laude and with honors in philosophy and membership in Phi Beta Kappa. He joined the CMC faculty in 1966 after taking his MA and PhD in philosophy at Yale University. Four times his CMC faculty colleagues have voted him the recipient of the Crocker Award for Excellence.

In 1987 he received the first Claremont McKenna College Presidential Award for Merit, which was given to him again in 2004, and he has also received the G. David Huntoon Senior Teaching Award at CMC. Roth holds honorary membership in the Claremont McKenna College Alumni Association, which also gave him its highest award, the George C. S. Benson Distinguished Achievement Award, in 2004. Roth has also been awarded the Doctorate of Humane Letters (Honoris Causa) by Indiana University, Grand Valley State University, Hebrew Union College, and Western University of Health Sciences.??

Roth's expertise in Holocaust and genocide studies, as well as in philosophy, ethics, American studies, and religious studies, has been advanced by postdoctoral appointments as a Graves Fellow in the Humanities, a Fulbright Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and a Fellow of the National Humanities Institute, Yale University. He used a Demonstration Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to develop two model interdisciplinary courses: "Perspectives on the American Dream" and "The Holocaust."

Roth has served as Visiting Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Haifa, Israel, and as Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Franklin College, Lugano, Switzerland, and Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan. With Professor Kenji Yoshida of Doshisha University, Roth received the first Faculty Pairing Grant awarded by the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. In 1995-96, Roth was a Fulbright Lecturer in American Studies attached to the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Education, Research, and Church Affairs, Oslo, Norway. In 2001, he held the Koerner Visiting Fellowship for the Study of the Holocaust at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in England. In 2004-05, Roth was the Ina Levine Invitational Scholar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.